


the feeling of tears

by jessenigma



Category: Ooku: The Inner Chambers
Genre: Character Study, Gen, oblique reference to sexual assault, spoilers through vol 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 01:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessenigma/pseuds/jessenigma
Summary: Gennai couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.





	the feeling of tears

Gennai couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.

Had it been when her mother had died and left her alone with her brothers, the sole heir to the stifling traditions of family business and childbearing?

Had it been when O-Miyo married and took her kisses away to her new husband, far from the woman who had loved her first?

Had it been when Hikojiro died of that godforsaken pox and forced her out into the world as Gennai, eager young scholar, and not O-Kichi, future head of the Hiraga house?

Maybe she’d cried at something pettier. Perhaps a play had moved her to dab a tear or two away. One of the many women she’d embraced might’ve slapped her face a little too hard after Gennai had tried and failed to slip away unnoticed into the night. An accident with one of her gadgets might’ve drawn a cry of pain and a quick shake of a wounded hand. But if Gennai had cried then, it hadn’t mattered any more than her laughter might have — tears of only a moment were hardly memorable.

Gennai certainly hadn’t cried that horrible night. There hadn’t been any room for tears as she fled, and after the last kick had landed and she felt a touch on her body where there shouldn’t have been, she froze everything away. She was always getting into trouble, so many words tripping out of her mouth to anger those around her, but she’d never felt so exposed before. To be a man was to be protected and cosseted. To be a woman was to be powerful and formidable. To be both and neither — Gennai was alone, no power and no protection beyond her wits.

How could they even stand a face like hers? Her eyes were too bloody and swollen to cry then.

The pain between her legs later had drawn no tears either, and the first sight of the rash on her chest merely brought the sinking feeling of inevitability that she pushed aside each day, holding court with her throng of admirers. There was no time to cry then either, not with work to finish and a newfound sense of her time trickling away.

But now, face pressed into Aonuma’s warm chest, Gennai can feel the fabric of his kimono rapidly growing damp beneath her eyes as the tears she’d been trying so hard to hold away with a smile finally burst free. This unexpected kindness from a man who’d held nothing but (well-deserved) antipathy towards her for their entire acquaintance was too much to bear – too much of a signal that her time as Hiraga Gennai was indeed rapidly coming to an end and yet she was hardly closer to finding a cure for the redface pox than she’d been when she started.

She could fail herself, fail Hikojiro. fail her beloved Lady Tanuma… all because of some damned illness taking away the only thing she could rely on in this world.

Gennai couldn’t remember the last time she cried. As she leans into Aonuma, his large hand surprisingly gentle against her back, she wishes she could rewind time and forget the feeling of tears altogether.

**Author's Note:**

> Out of all the dozens of characters in Ooku, Gennai is my favorite, and I'm still very hurt by her death... so naturally, instead of finishing the cheerier fic featuring her that's been sitting in my drafts for months, I finished the depressing one that's been sitting there for months instead. My sincerest apologies to the one other person out there who loves Gennai enough to read this in the first place.
> 
> You can chat with me about Ooku or Fumi Yoshinaga's work in general on twitter [@jessinbooks](https://twitter.com/jessinbooks)


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